The Flockmaster of Poison Creek Part 31

"It might have happened to anybody, though, a dog and a man against him."

"Yes, even a better man."

"A better man don't live," said Joan, with calm decision.

Reid bent his eyes to the pommel of his saddle, and sat so a few moments, in the way of a man who turns something in his thoughts.

Then:

"I guess I'll go on back to the sheep."

"He may never get well to thank you for what you did, Earl," and Joan's voice threatened tears in its low, earnest tremolo, "but I----"

"Oh, that's all right, Joan." Reid waved grat.i.tude, especially vicarious grat.i.tude, aside, smiling lightly. "He's not booked to go yet; wait till he's well and let him do his own talking. Somebody ought to sneak that gun away from him, though, and slip a twenty-two in his scabbard. They can't hurt him so bad with that when they take it away from him."

"It might have happened to you!" she reproached.

"Well, it might," Reid allowed, after some reflection. "Sure, it might," brightening, looking at her frankly, his ingenuous smile softening the crafty lines of his thin face. "Well, leave him to Rabbit and Dad; they'll fix him up."

"If he isn't better tomorrow I'm going for a doctor, if n.o.body else will."

"You're not goin' to hang around there all the time, are you, Joan?"

Reid's face flushed as he spoke, his eyes made small, as if he looked in at a furnace door.

Joan did not answer this, only lifted her face with a quick start, looking at him with brows lifted, widening her great, luminous, tender eyes. Reid stroked her horse's mane, his stirrup close to her foot, his look downcast, as if ashamed of the jealousy he had betrayed.

"I don't mind the lessons, and that kind of stuff," said he, looking up suddenly, "but I don't want the girl--oh well, you know as well as I do what kind of a deal the old folks have fixed up for you and me, Joan."

"Of course. I'm going to marry you to save you from work."

"I thought it was a raw deal when they sprung it on me, but that was before I saw you, Joan. But it's all right; I'm for it now."

"You're easy, Earl; dad's workin' you for three good years without pay. As far as I'm concerned, you'd just as well hit the breeze out of this country right now. Dad can't deliver the goods."

"I'm soft, but I'm not that soft, Joan. I could leave here tomorrow; what's to hold me? And as far as the old man's cutting me out of his will goes, I could beat it in law, and then have a pile big enough left to break my neck if I was to jump off the top of it. They're not putting anything over on me, Joan. I'm sticking to this little old range because it suits me to stick. I would go tomorrow if it wasn't for you."

Reid added this in a low voice, his words a sigh, doing it well, even convincingly well.

"I'm sorry," Joan said, moved by his apparent sincerity, "but there's not a bit of use in your throwing away three years, or even three more months, of your life here, Earl."

"You'll like me better when you begin to know me, Joan. I've stood off because I didn't want to interfere with your studies, but maybe now, since you've got a vacation, I can come over once in a while and get acquainted."

"Earl, it wouldn't be a bit of use." Joan spoke earnestly, pitying him a little, now that she began to believe him.

"Why, we're already engaged," he said; "they've disposed of us like they do princes and princesses."

"I don't know how they marry them off, but if that's the way, it won't work on the sheep range," said Joan.

"We've been engaged, officially, ever since I struck the range, and I've never once, never even--" He hesitated, constrained by bashfulness, it seemed, from his manner of bending his head and plucking at her horse's mane.

"We're not even officially engaged," she denied, coldly, not pitying his bashfulness at all, nor bent to a.s.sist him in delivering what lay on the end of his tongue. "You can't pick up a sheepwoman and marry her off--like some old fool king's daughter."

Reid placed his hand over hers where it lay idly on the saddle-horn, the reins loosely held. He leaned closer, his eyes burning, his face near her own, so near that she shrank back, and drew on her hand to come free.

"I don't see why we need to wait three years to get married, Joan," he argued, his persuasive voice very soft and tender. "If the old man saw I meant business----"

"Business!" scorned Joan.

"Sheep business, I mean, Joan," chidingly, a tincture of injury in his tone.

"Oh, sheep business," said Joan, leaning far over to look at the knotting of her cinch.

"Sure, to settle down to it here and take it as it comes, the way he got his start, he'd come across with all the money we'd want to take a run out of here once in a while and light things up. We ought to be gettin' the good out of it while we've got an edge on us, Joan."

Joan swung to the ground, threw a stirrup across the saddle, and began to tighten her cinch. Reid alighted with a word of protest, offering his hand for the work. Joan ignored his proffer, with a little independent, altogether scornful, toss of the head.

"You can find plenty of them ready to take you up," she said. "What's the reason you have to stay right here for three years, and then marry me, to make a million dollars? Can't you go anywhere else?"

"The old man's picked on this country because he knows your dad, and he settled on you for the girl because you got into his eye, just the way you've got into mine, Joan. I was sore enough about it at first to throw the money and all that went with it to the pigs, and blow out of here. But that was before I saw you."

"Oh!" said Joan, in her pettish, discounting way.

"I mean every word of it, Joan. I can't talk like--like--some men--my heart gets in the way, I guess, and chokes me off. But I never saw a girl that I ever lost sleep over till I saw you."

Joan did not look at him as he drew nearer with his words. She pulled the stirrup down, lifted her foot to it, and stood so a second, hand on the pommel to mount. And so she glanced round at him, standing near her shoulder, his face flushed, a brightness in his eyes.

Quicker than thought Reid threw his arm about her shoulders, drawing her to him, his hot cheek against her own, his hot breath on her lips.

Surging with indignation of the mean advantage he had taken of her, Joan freed her foot from the stirrup, twisting away from the impending salute, her hand to Reid's shoulder in a shove that sent him back staggering.

"I thought you were more of a man than that!" she said.

"I beg your pardon, Joan; it rushed over me--I couldn't help it."

Reid's voice shook as he spoke; he stood with downcast eyes, the expression of contrition.

"You're too fresh to keep!" Joan said, brus.h.i.+ng her face savagely with her hand where his cheek had pressed it for a breath.

"I'll ask you next time," he promised, looking up between what seemed hope and contrition. But there was a mocking light in his sophisticated face, a greedy sneer in his l.u.s.tful eyes, which Joan could feel and see, although she could not read to the last shameful depths.

"Don't try it any more," she warned, in the cool, even voice of one sure of herself.

"I ought to have a right to kiss my future wife," he defended, a shadow of a smile on his thin lips.

"There's not a bit of use to go on harping on that, Earl," she said, in a way of friendly counsel, the incident already past and trampled under foot, it seemed. "If you want to stay here and work for dad, three years or thirty years, I don't care, but don't count on me. I guess if you go straight and prove you deserve it, you'll not need any girl to help you get the money."

"It's got to be you--n.o.body else, Joan."

"Then kiss your old million--or whatever it is--good-bye!"

Joan lifted to the saddle as if swept into it by a wave, and drew her reins tight, and galloped away.